by Robert Adams
Madman’s Army
The Horseclans
Book 17
Robert Adams
SIGNET
Copyright © 1987
First Printing, September, 1987
Content
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Epilogue
About The Author
Dedication
For Alessandro Ferrero, M.D., for David and Susan Crippen, and for all the fine folk at Swamp Con.
Prologue
The old, white-haired, newly dead man lay face down upon the floor tiles, the ornate and bejeweled hilt of a dress-dagger jutting up from his back. Beside the body stood the man who had just killed him, a bared saber in one hand.
"It had to be done," he said, his voice sad, regretful. "There was never a warrior and leader of warriors I respected more, but his stubborn, senile sadism was tearing the army apart at the seams, and with it our Council and our future, as well."
Of the score or so of other men in that chamber, some nodded in agreement, most just stood, staring in shock of the suddenness of the fatal deed, and one burst out bitterly, "Murderer! Back-stabbing murderer! It's you deserve to be dead, and if I had a sword ..."
The tall, saturnine man with the saber stepped off to one side, waving his hand toward a rack of swords and a table on which lay an assortment of dirks and daggers, saying, "Come up and choose a sword, then, my lord Vikos, and I'll meet you here and now, or later, ahorse or afoot."
The shorter, slighter, balding man began to push through the crowd, grim resolution on his shaven face, but near the forefront of the group, he was grabbed by both biceps and shaken mercilessly by a broader, more massive, greying man, who half-shouted, "Now, dammit, Vikos—Vikos! Blast your arse, listen to me! Portos was right, can't you see that, man? Yes, I know
Strahteegos Pahvlos once spared you, saved your life, but that Pahvlos wasn't the one we've been having to deal with of late. It was a simple choice: the life of an old, stubborn, selfish man or the lives of who can ever know just how many of us, of our people. And he's dead now, thank God. How can you killing Portos or Portos killing you alter the situation, hey? May God damn you for a stubborn fool!" He shook his prey again, harder, hard enough to cause the witness to unconsciously wince. "Come to your senses, Vikos."
A man even more massively built than the shaker touched his thick arm with a huge hand, rumbling in a bass voice, "Stop it, Grahvos. Keep it up and you'll snap his neck or his spine, and we don't need two deaths here today, do we?"
With a deep sigh, Grahvos nodded. "You're right, of course, Bahos. I just couldn't see a duel to add to everything else."
The bigger man took the released Vikos and eased him into an empty chair off his wobbly legs, where he just sat, breathing hard and dabbing with tremulous hands at his bleeding nose, while using the tip of his sore, bitten tongue to take inventory of the teeth in his jaws.
A younger version of Grahvos said, "My lords, please resume your places at the table. This Council meeting has not yet been adjourned, and now there is even more business to consider, weigh and decide. Lord Portos, that includes you, please; put your saber back on the rack . . . and the other sword, too."
"Sweet Christ!" yelped one of the men, "Grand Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos lies knifed and dead by the door and you insist on business as usual, Mahvros? You must have ice water in your veins, not blood, like the rest of us."
"Not at all, man," said another. "He's simply practical rather than as emotional as some I might name here."
The first man bristled, but before he could do more than open his mouth, the man next to him, another thick, solid specimen, growled, "Enough of this, all of you. You heard our chairman. Take your places, unless you want Lord Grahvos and Lord Bahos and me going around and shaking each of you, in turn." To the chairman, he said, "Mahvros, you're bleeding like a stuck pig. It wasn't enough to get that dirk out of your shoulder, man, it needs at least bandaging. Here, let me, I own some small experience at such tasks. Want to give me a hand, Tomos?"
As soon as Thoheeks Sitheeros and Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos had completed their work and resumed their places, the chairman—his left arm now in a sling and his shoulder swathed in linen strips torn from his shirt and that of his two benefactors— spoke, saying, "All right, let's try to make this short and sweet, get as much as possible done in as short as possible a time, lest pain and blood loss pitch me down on the floor, too.
"We stand in need of another field commander, now. I'd recommend Tomos Gonsalos save for two reasons. Number one, of course, is that he is not one of us, but from Karaleenos; number two is that he is doing a superlative job in his current position and, were we to appoint him field commander, I cannot think of any man who could replace him, who could run his present command anywhere nearly as well.
"Therefore, I suggest that Captain Thoheeks Grahvos take on that command either permanently or at least until we weigh out the remaining officers and find a better commander."
All eyes turned to the greying nobleman seated near the chairman. He shrugged. "I'll take over, but only if there is a firm understanding that it is purely temporary, and that I will own the authority to groom candidates for the permanent posting. There are two men I can think of right now who would most likely make us excellent strahteegohee." He did not think it just then politic to mention that one of the prime men he thought of was the very man who just had slain the previous strahteegos, Captain Thoheeks Portos, Sub-strahteegos of Cavalry.
Mahvros nodded. "I thank you, Acting-Strahteegos Grahvos, on behalf of Council and . . ."
"Wait a minute, now," yelped one of the younger of the men ranged about the long table. "Council must vote. When do we vote?"
"You don't, Lord Pennendos," snapped Mahvros peevishly, gritting his teeth against the pain of his pierced shoulder. "When it comes to a final, permanent appointment, then Council votes. Something like this does not require the votes of the full Council, only a half plus one. Stop trying to start up a controversy. If you have nothing better with which to occupy yourself, you can search out claimants to the now-vacant thoheekseeahn of our recently deceased Thoheeks Pahvlos."
Thoheeks Sitheeros sighed and shook his head. "I suppose we can't hope that the word won't spread that we murdered the old bastard, in here . . . ?"
"Of course that word will be disseminated," agreed Grahvos. "There're just too many big, loud, flapping mouths for it to be otherwise ... not a few of them presently in this room, amongst us."
"And what answer can we give to such calumnies?" demanded Thoheeks Neekos, a man built along the lines of Thoheeks Vikos but about the age of Thoheeks Grahvos.
"The truth," replied the chairman, Mahvros. "The old fool went out of his head completely, threatened us all with a sword from off the rack, put a dirk into my shoulder and was put down for it—treated the only way you can treat mad dogs or murderously mad men.
Most who've had any dealings with him of late will believe it, and that means almost all of the army. Those few who choose to not believe will likely be the born troublemaker types, anyway."
"Who votes his two proxies, now?" rumbled Thoheeks Bahos. "Someone will have to, and a proxy for his own, too, until we find and confirm another claimant to that thoheekseeahn."
Mahvros wrinkled up his brows. "Yes, there's that problem. To the best of my knowledge, his only living relative is Thoheeks Ahramos of Kahlkos . . . and that's one of the proxies he was voting."
"Well, then," mused Thoheeks Grahvos, "where there are no relatives, then I suppose friends will have to suffice. Let Lord Vikos vote the three proxies. Is that amenable, Vikos?"
The slighter man nodded, stiffly, cautiously, but still the movement set his nose to bleeding once more.
Captain Thoheeks Ptimnos frowned and rubbed absently at the patch covering the empty socket that once had held his right eye. "We may well have more than merely a little trouble with his lover, you know. He announced some time back that he was going to make the young man his legal heir."
"Utterly ridiculous on the face of it!" snorted Captain Thoheeks Portos, derisively. "He may be pretty as a girl and he may or may not be pleasant in bed, but he still is only the third son of a vahrohnos and in no way suitable to rule lands and regard the welfare of peoples. It's but another evidence of senility ... if he even meant it at all, of course. In their cups or in the throes of pleasure, men are apt to make promises they would not otherwise make. When I get back to camp, I'll seek out young Ilios and have some words with him. As I recall, he intimidates easily. With Pahvlos dead, now, he just may decide that he's had enough of army life and hie himself home and out of our hair."
On a lighter note, Thoheeks Sitheeros said, with a wide grin, "Why don't you take him on yourself, Portos? Couldn't you use a bedwarmer?"
"Don't tempt me," the saturnine officer grinned back. "As I said, he's pretty as a girl. But unfortunately, he can't give me increase, and I don't want my house to die with me. Why don't you find me a fair, well-dowered little wife like you found for Tomos, eh?"
"You, a kath'ahrohs of pure Ehleen heritage, would marry a mere barbarian?" said Sitheeros, mockingly.
Portos chuckled. "For a large enough dowry, my friend, I'd marry one of your cow elephants."
Everyone save Vikos laughed; he was afraid to do so lest his nose again begin to drip blood, but he did venture a smile. Mahvros, holding his breath against his pain, still uttered no rebukes for the time being wasted in frivolous chatter, for he would far rather hear the Council jesting and laughing than snarling and hurling insults and edged weapons at each other.
Far and far to the northeast of the city wherein the thoheeksee sat in council, a mounted column crossed the shallow Kuzawahtchee River that served as border between the Kingdom of Karaleenos and the onetime kingdom to the south. Once across the river, they began to make camp, unloading felt yurts from off high-wheeled carts.
They were mostly men of slight, wiry, flat-muscled build, having hair of various shades of blond or red and eyes that were mostly blue or grey or green. They wore baggy trousers tucked into the tops of felt-and-leather boots, embroidered shirts that were full in the body but tight in the sleeves, plus armor that was mostly mixtures of cour boulli, mail, scale and plate, much of it gaudily painted or enameled. Their helmets bore plumes, feathers, horsehair crests or whatever else suited individual fancies, and the saddles of their horses were works of art—heavy tooled and dyed leather, inset and fitted with hooks, rings, buckles, decorations and plates of steel, brass, silver, gold and pewter.
Their weapons, however, were almost uniform in character, at least. Every man bore a cased hornbow— short, recurved and reflex, handmade of orangewood or elm, cowhorn and sinew, with arm-tips of antler or bone and bowstrings of waxed silk—and two dozens of arrows for it. Each also was armed with a saber, a target of leather-covered lindenwood, a spear or lance six to eight feet long, a war-axe, a heavy dirk and one or more other knives and daggers of varying sizes and purposes.
Someone unfamiliar with them might well have thought them a military unit, possibly mercenary cavalry, but they were not, not strictly. They were of the race called Horseclansmen. For hundreds of years, the forebears of these men had, with their herds and their families, roved the prairies and plains far to the west called the Sea of Grasses. Then, less than a hundred years before, above ten thousand of them—men, women and children, with all they possessed—had crossed some thousand or more miles of territory—fighting where they had to fight, moving peaceably elsewhere— and at least one range of mountains to invade and conquer that Ehleen land called Kehnooryos Ehlahs. They all would have been happy with that land alone, but with that land they also had inherited enemies on every border who would not let the new overlords live in peace, and therefore the past seventy years had been a time of almost constant border wars for the Horseclansmen, their new vassals and the mercenaries they had had to hire on, even as had the native ruling dynasty which had preceded them and been paramount in the land before their victorious incursion.
First, it had been war on the northern and northwestern borders. The upshot of their victory over these enemies had been acquisition of them first as allies, then as vassals. The next war had been all along the southern border, with the Kingdom of Karaleenos. After driving the invading Karaleenohee back, twice, only to see them invade again each following year, the army of Kehnooryos Ehlahs and its dependent states had followed the beaten-off invaders back across the border and taken the fight into Karaleenos itself, driving the king out of his own capital and slowly conquering chunk after chunk of his kingdom, trouncing every Karaleenos army they could bring to battle and killing no less than two succeeding kings in two of those battles.
Meanwhile, along the western border of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, warfare against the mountain tribes had never really ceased for all of the four hundred plus years since the Ehleenohee had invaded the land from the Eastern Sea, once called Atlantic, nor did it cease with the change of overlords from Ehleenohee to Horse-clansmen. It was not, had never been, the formal warfare of the northern or southerly borders, but it was no less bloody, vicious and brutal, for all its informality.
Another drive against the battered army of Karaleenos, fighting now under a new-crowned young king, Zenos XII, had come to grips with him and it just south of the Lumbuh River bridge and so badly mauled it that another immediate battle would have been out of the question. However, Demetrios, one of the High Lords of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, had been knocked from off the bridge and drowned in the battle's prologue; therefore, a truce had been struck and the other High Lord—Milo Morai, a Horseclans chief—had been summoned by gallopers. He had brought with him reinforcements and the High Lady Aldora Pahpahs of Linsee, widow of Demetrios, who had cordially hated her husband for his homosexuality.
Milo had treated his beaten foemen with magnanimity, and it was as well that he had, for he shortly had received word from his capital that the Lord of the Pirate Isles—one Alexandras, himself a kath'-ahrohs or Ehleen purebred of the old stock—had sailed in with word that the new-crowned High King Zastros of the Kingdom of Southern Ehleenohee was even then preparing to lead a host of upwards of a half million warriors across Karaleenos' southern border, with the avowed purpose of bringing all of the eastern coast under his sway.
When Milo had convinced his sometime enemy King Zenos of the mutual threat and joined the two armies, he had sent messengers far and wide to sound the tocsin, even while striking shaky alliances with hill chiefs and swamp-dwellers to attempt to slow the advance of the huge army of Zastros and interdict its lines of supply insofar as possible.
Help had, indeed, come. Not only from his own lands and those of King Zenos, either, but from far to the north—the Kingdom of Harzburk, the Kingdom of Pitzburk, the Aristocratic Republic of Eeree on the shore of the Great Inland Sea, all had sent noble knights and a horde of mercenaries. Upon learning just why units of the army of Kehnooryos Ehlahs were being withdrawn, warband after warband of mountain tribes had descended from their fastnesses to try selling their services to their ancient enemies.
What had finally occurred at the environs of that bridge over the Lumbuh River had been almost in the nature of an anticlimax. Starved of supplies and near mutiny upon its arrival, the monstrous force had tried but once to cross the heavily-fortified bridge, been driven back in rout, and then had simply hunkered down in low, unhealthy riverside camps to sicke
n and die of fever, fluxes, wounds, starvation and the nightly attacks of Horseclansmen, swampers and river-borne pirates.
At last, certain of the higher nobility—the thoheeksee or dukes—of Zastros' kingdom had had enough and sent a herald to the High Lord by night, offering certain things if they were allowed to march their remaining forces back south, out of Karaleenos and into their own lands in peace.
The High Lord had agreed; however, he had done more than that. He had announced to the herald the imminent merger of his lands with the Kingdom of Karaleenos and the Grand Duchy of Kuhmbuhluhn, the resultant state to be called the Confederation of Eastern Peoples, and he offered the sometime Southern Kingdom a equal place in this state. Upon their acceptance of this astounding offer and the delivery of signed and sealed oaths from every noble landholder still alive and with the army that Zastros had led north, the High Lord had also agreed to send to the fledgling Council of Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee of the Southern Ehleenohee a sub-strahteegos commanding a force of troops about which a new army to enforce the will of Council might be formed.
He had sent one of the relatives of King Zenos, Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos, with a regiment of mercenary pikemen, a squadron of heavy lancers and a squadron-size of Horseclansmen, this group including a cow elephant captured from Zastros' force during the single attack on the bridge.
The pike regiment and the heavy lancers still were there, but most of the original contingent of Horse-clansmen had followed Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn, their leader, back to Kehnooryos Ehlahs, feeling like him that five and more years separated from wives and families was enough and more than enough.
Most of the unit now going into camp just to the south of the Kuzawahtchee River was replacement for that earlier-sent force of Horseclansmen. The bulk of this present lot were of Clans Skaht and Baikuh, and were led by Chief Hwahlt Skaht of Skaht, along with subchiefs from both clans. In addition to these larger contingents, however, there were quite a few young, wanderlusting warriors from some dozen other clans who had heard from Chief Pawl of the vast opportunities available in the far-southerly lands for young men of their race, who were greatly respected by the ruling thoheeksee of the onetime Southern Kingdom of Ehleenohee.